Since the passing of the 2000 UN Palermo Protocol, efforts to combat human trafficking have received concerted attention from global governance agencies, nation-states, civil society, academic institutions, faith communities, the private sector, and even Hollywood actors and NFL quarterbacks. Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) Human Trafficking research cluster, founded in 2015, situates these interventions within historical scholarship on chattel slavery and abolition, as well as contemporary legacies of globalized racial and gender inequality. “Whitewashing Abolition” convenes scholars, activists, and migrant workers to question the various institutional displacements that occur in contemporary abolitionist projects of human trafficking. Focusing on the institutional power of whiteness–and related forms of Global North policy imperatives, funding regimes, humanitarian sentimentality, and institutional erasure–this conference asks how efforts to combat human trafficking can move beyond “White Saviorism” and toward engaged global solidarity.

Zine-Making & Abolition: Counter-Narratives and Radical ImaginariesThis panel brings together a group of artists, writers, and activists to discuss the relationship of abolitionist work and thinking to independent publishing. Through informal conversation about zine-making and radical imaginaries, this panel will touch on the importance of independent media in envisioning a world without prisons and an end to racial capitalism.

Lydnsey Beutin, University of Pennsylvania | University of Virginia, Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies

Brittany Webb, Temple University | African American Museum in Philadelphia

Janie Chuang, American University School of Law

Jasmine Sankofa

Moderator: Emily Owens, Brown University

Racialized Labor, Migration, and Border RegimesDespite the Trump administration’s massive repeal of refugee, immigrant, worker, and civil rights, the US commitment to “combating human trafficking” has been amplified and weaponized. These panelists will discuss how this is made possible by erasing the intersection of trafficking with other forms of human mobility and political organizing.

Whitewashing Sex and WarThis panel engages the often overlooked connections between US militarism, political and economic investments in Southeast Asia, and contemporary humanitarian and rescue initiatives.

The conference ended with dinner at The Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University. This was the best conference I have ever attended. I will be adding the video as soon as it becomes available.

On Saturday we went ice skating in Providence, and then we went to Diamond Hill Park in Cumberland to go sledding. Our journey ended with a home-cooked meal at Empower’s airbnb.